A police expert who has been sounding the alarm on the lack of leadership in Minneapolis for years said state and city leaders retain their grip on power by “lying to the public each and every day.”
Dr. Travis Yates, an expert on police leadership and training and a retired police major, joined Liz Collin on her podcast. Yates, who first called out the lack of leadership in Minneapolis in 2019 — and recently exposed the long list of complaints against former Minneapolis police chief Brian O’Hara — spoke about even more leadership failures.
For instance, Yates discussed how the civil rights of police officers have apparently been violated by prosecutors, how the number of police officers in Minneapolis has dwindled, and how the idea of reimagining public safety needs a long overdue reality check.
Unlawful prosecutions of police officers?
Alpha News recently broke the story about how several police officers in Minnesota have been charged without a grand jury indictment, which some attorneys believe is a clear violation of state law.
In response to these developments, Yates said, “There may be nothing more Minnesota or Minneapolis than politicians and leaders in that state not following the rules.”
“You have to always be careful when you have these politicians preaching to you, especially and unfortunately that state at this time, they’re doing everything but follow the rules,” he added.
In the case of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin and the other officers convicted in the arrest of George Floyd, more than a few civil rights attorneys were involved, including Ben Crump, who represented George Floyd’s family, and Mayor Jacob Frey, a former civil rights attorney who publicly declared that the technique used by the four officers was not authorized by the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD).
Two other former civil rights attorneys were also involved: Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and Jerry Blackwell, who handled the opening and closing remarks during Chauvin’s trial.
Yates said that Frey, Ellison and Blackwell “knew full well they were violating the law. They knew full well they were violating the civil rights of those officers. And ultimately what this tells me is groups that say they’re for civil rights rarely actually are. That is unfortunate because we should be protecting civil rights, but there’s been so much manipulation in this case and others.
“It seems like the political structure can only accomplish things through massive propaganda … it is amazing what they’re able to accomplish and the power they’re able to amass by literally lying to the public each and every day,” Yates explained.
“The fact that these politicians can sit there and keep maintaining that lie from then until now with the facts in their face just shows you how empowered they are by the media and by all the political structure there in that state,” he added.
“The fact that Derek Chauvin is still in prison today with the information that we know … I just laugh when I hear civil rights attorneys,” Yates continued. “They’re for anything but civil rights. They’ve been captured by whatever evil, twisted, maniac idea the politicians are throwing at them.”
Alpha News reached out to both the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office and the Attorney General’s Office to ask why they have been prosecuting officers without a grand jury indictment. Neither office responded to our request for comment.
The dwindling number of Minneapolis police officers
Yates also spoke with Collin about how MPD now has 55% fewer officers than before the George Floyd riots.
In May of 2020, MPD had nearly 888 police officers. Several sources told Alpha News that there are now only 395 officers — and 29 of them are actually in field training. Yates noted that 211 of these officers have been hired since 2021, which indicates that more than half of the officers have only five years of police experience or less.
Given these numbers, Yates questioned “if reimagining means a magic trick where the entire police department disappears.”
“Any police department that’s down those number of officers, they’re not responding in a timely fashion at all to anything. They’re not stopping anything. They’re not being proactive. They’re not investigating things. The citizens that live there do not have a law enforcement agency,” he said.
“The people that live in Minneapolis need to understand you’re being lied to every day, every day,” Yates said. “And they can wake up, they can vote for the right people that believe in law and order, that believe in safety, that believe their children should be able to go out and play. That’s not politics, that’s just common sense.”
